The $19 billion budget provides for an additional space shuttle mission next summer, the continued development of a crew capsule and expedited development of a heavy-lift rocket.

As many as 7,000 jobs in Clear Lake were at risk under Obama's plan, which called for the cancellation of the Constellation program to develop NASA's next generation of rockets and spacecraft and to return humans to the Moon.

"The bill that we put out of committee today preserves our workforce, our creativity and the commitment to humans in space," said Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a co-author.

Although the White House has not formally signaled its approval of the Senate plan, there may be enough carrots in the proposed legislation to win Obama's support.

"We think this is a great start," said Lori Garver, NASA's deputy administrator. "It accomplishes the major shifts the president set out to have for the space program."

An unnamed White House official not authorized to comment said "the bill appears to contain the critical elements necessary for achieving the president's mission for NASA."

Mars is still the focus

The White House may support the bill because it allows Mars to remain the primary destination — Constellation focused on going back to the moon - and the Senate plan includes robust financing for commercial spaceflight, an industry the president is keen to grow.

However the Senate bill preserves core elements of the Constellation program. The bill calls for NASA to build a heavy-lift rocket that can lift at least 70 tons to orbit by the end of 2016, as well as a crew capsule that will probably look a lot like Orion.

Under the president's plan, commercial providers were to step in within a few years to begin delivering payloads of supplies to the International Space Station, and crew by the middle of this decade.

Hutchison and Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, a former astronaut and co-author of the bill, said they were not willing to fully rely on commercial providers yet for these critical services.

By directing NASA to build and fly its own rockets now, the bill ensures that Johnson Space Center will play a key role in the future of human spaceflight by training astronauts, managing construction of rockets and directing their flight in space.

"This solidifies the fact that the Johnson Space Center will remain the home of human space exploration," Mitchell said.

A victory for NASA

With bipartisan support the bill passed out of the Senate's Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on Thursday. Yet it has a way to go before becoming law. If so inclined, the president could probably exert enough political pressure to prevent a full Senate vote. And the U.S. House must also develop its own bill soon.

Nevertheless, since the February release of the president's budget proposal for NASA, this week's actions have left Johnson Space Center supporters feeling as though they have won a major battle, perhaps the definitive one, on NASA's fate.

After a months-long review process of U.S. human spaceflight last summer, a commission led by Norm Augustine found that NASA was on an unsustainable trajectory with the Houston-led Constellation program.

As a result, Obama and his advisors canceled Constellation and told NASA to refocus its efforts on developing advanced technologies that would allow the space agency to fly humans beyond low-Earth orbit more efficiently and at lower cost. Critics of the president's plan said it would cause NASA to lose its pre-eminence in space.

Now the question is whether there's enough funding in the Senate plan, which is at the overall level of the president's budget and provides far less for research into new technologies, to support the speedy development of new rockets.

"This appears to be a good compromise between the White House and these members of Congress," said Leroy Chiao, a former astronaut and member of the Augustine committee. "The only big picture question in my mind is whether or not the funding is adequate to perform this plan."